After 400 Years, a Challenge to Kepler:He Fabricated His Data, Scholar Says

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.

About the Archive

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

JOHANNES KEPLER, the father of modern astronomy, fabricated data in presenting his theory of how the planets move around the Sun, apparently to bolster acceptance of the insight by skeptics, a scholar has found.

The scholar, William H. Donahue, said the evidence of Kepler's scientific fakery is contained in an elaborate chart he presented to support his theory.

Kepler showed that the planets move in elliptical orbits rather than in circles as Copernicus suggested. In his book describing the insight, he said it was confirmed by independent calculations of the planets' positions. In fact, Dr. Donahue says, Kepler derived the data by calculations based on the theory itself.

Kepler anticipated stiff criticism of his theory. From antiquity, the circle had been considered the only geometrical shape perfect enough to describe the movement of heavenly bodies.

Done in 1609, Kepler's fakery is one of the earliest known examples of the use of false data by a giant of modern science.

The discovery was made by Dr. Donahue, a science historian, while translating Kepler's master work, ''Astronomia Nova,'' or ''The New Astronomy,'' into English. Dr. Donahue, who lives in Sante Fe, N.M., described his discovery in a recent issue of The Journal of the History of Astronomy.

The fabricated data appear in calculated positions for the planet Mars, which Kepler used as a case study for all planetary motion. Kepler claimed the calculations gave his elliptical theory an independent check. But in fact they did nothing of the kind.

''He fudged things,'' Dr. Donahue said, adding that Kepler was never challenged by a contemporary.

Experts, nearly unanimous in defending the great astronomer, say Kepler's act may be less reprehensible than it seems. For instance, methods of investigation and reporting at the start of the scientific revolution were often quiet rudimentary.

''Kepler was one of the people who invented modern science,'' said Walter W. Stewart, a researcher with the National Institutes of Health who is helping Congress investigate cases of scientific fraud. ''It's not clear his standards were the same as ours.''

Dr. Owen Gingerich, a professor of astronomy and science history at the center for astrophysics of the Smithsonian Institution and Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., said Kepler's act, in its day, may simply have been a legitimate rhetorical flourish meant to persuade recalcitrant colleagues of the correctness of his insight.

''Normally one would not expect there to be a rhetoric of science, or a political part of the presentation,'' Dr. Gingerich said. ''But in reality that element is very important.'' Kepler's proposal of elliptical orbits was ''a radical departure from anything before,'' he noted. ''You could hardly sell that without making it look like you'd done it with tremendous accuracy.''

Congress and scientific societies have been increasingly worried by scientific fraud, as instances of it have emerged publicly with increasing frequency in recent years. But in fact, several giants of science engaged in what appears to be fakery, probably to increase the chances that their radical ideas would be accepted by skeptical peers.

Fakery by Giants of Science

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), the Austrian monk who founded the science of genetics, published papers on his work with peas that some experts say were statistically too good to be true. Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who formulated the law of gravitation, relied on unseemly mathematical sleight of hand in his magnum opus to make the predictive power of his work seem greater than it was. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the founder of the modern scientific method, wrote about experiments that were so difficult to duplicate that colleagues doubted he had done them.

In the case of Kepler, a pivotal presentation of data to support the elliptical theory was ''a fraud, a complete fabrication,'' Dr. Donahue wrote in his paper. ''It has nothing in common with the computations from which it was supposedly generated.''

Kepler was born in 1571 in Weil der Stadt, Germany, to a thin, garrulous woman, who was later tried for witchcraft, and a mercenary soldier who eventually abandoned his family. Kepler himself was moving toward a theological career when a death left a vacancy at the Lutheran school in Graz, which led him into teaching and astronomy.

In the fashion of the day, he also devoted much time to astrology, drawing up at least 800 horoscopes. He was strongly motivated by a mystical devotion to musical harmonies, seeking to find them in the cosmos.

Kepler was short, frail, nearsighted, plagued by fevers and stomach ailments, yet was driven to succeed. He had a ready wit and a modest manner that won him many friends.

Making Sense of Copernicus's Work

Kepler's destiny was to make sense out of the work of Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), the man who put the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the center of planetary motions. Although correct, this conception was flawed in predicting the position of planets because Copernicus used only circles to describe their paths, although they actually move in somewhat flattened circles known as ellipses.

To increase the predictive accuracy of his system, Copernicus had the planets move in a series of smaller circles about the orbital paths. These so-called epicycles were quite numerous. And, in the end, his forecasts came out no better than those made with the methods of ancient astronomers.

Kepler's breakthrough gave the concept of the solar system a physical basis and made planetary predictions 100 times more accurate than those of Copernicus.

The opportunity for the breakthrough came in 1600 when Tycho Brahe, the great Danish astronomer, welcomed the 28-year-old Kepler to his castle observatory outside Prague. Tycho, a rich nobleman, set Kepler to work to explain the orbit of Mars.

This led Kepler to embark on writing ''The New Astronomy,'' which aimed at documenting his work with Mars and attempted to establish how the planet really moved and, by extension, the other planets. Previous astronomers in devising methods to predict planetary movements were not unduly concerned if their theoretical constructs had little or no basis in physical reality.

By early 1605, Kepler had completed at least 51 chapters without discovering that the orbit was an ellipse.

The insight came in April 1605. In addition to hitting upon the real shape of the orbits, Kepler discovered that the ellipse tied in beautifully with his earlier observation that a line from the Sun to a moving planet sweeps over equal areas in equal intervals of time, meaning the planet moves fastest when closest to the Sun. He used this area law and the elliptical shape to generate very accurate calculations of past planetary movements, using Tycho's observations to show the actual positions. After various delays, ''The New Astronomy'' was published in 1609 in Heidelberg to mixed reviews. It contained 70 chapters.

'Something Strange Going On'

Dr. Donahue's detective work started as he read the book in Latin and redid Kepler's calculations. ''You can't get the language right if you don't understand what he's describing,'' Dr. Donahue said. But soon he found ''something strange going on.''

In chapter 53 of ''The New Astronomy,'' Kepler outlined a method he said he used to calculate the distances of the Earth and Mars from the Sun. The complex method was based on triangulation, which takes the distance between two points and then calculates the distance to a third by analyzing the angles in the triangle formed by the three points. The resulting distances, calculated for a variety of different dates, traced the geometry of planetary motions and gave hints that the orbits were far from circular.

Kepler cited these calculations as independent proof of the correctness of his claim for elliptical orbits. His findings were displayed in a large chart.

But when Dr. Donahue started working through the method to make sure he understood the basis for Kepler's chart, he found his numbers disagreeing with those of the great astronomer. After repeatedly getting the wrong answers for the numbers displayed on Kepler's chart, Dr. Donahue started trying other methods. Finally, he realized that the numbers in the chart had been generated not by independent calculations based on triangulated planetary positions, but by calculations using the area law itself.

''He was claiming that those positions came from the earlier theory,'' Dr. Donahue said. ''But actually all of them were generated from the ellipse.''

Dr. Donahue, like many other experts, feels the episode does little to diminish Kepler's reputation.

''He had a difficult job trying to convince people that the ellipse was correct,'' he said. ''So he fudged a little. This doesn't take him down a notch. It was a small point in the argument.''

Kepler died in 1630, no contemporary having challenged his fabrication.

Dr. Donahue's translation of Kepler's master work, with its deception on full display, is to be published this year by the Cambridge University Press.